


The Thief

by BettlerWerdenFuerstenbrueder



Category: El Goonish Shive
Genre: AU, Gen, Goonmanji, Shrinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-12
Updated: 2016-12-12
Packaged: 2018-09-08 03:10:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8828152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BettlerWerdenFuerstenbrueder/pseuds/BettlerWerdenFuerstenbrueder
Summary: Goonmanji was non-canon, but even non-canon events have a past and a future, so... what happened to that thief?





	

"Keep this in mind the next time you think about shoplifting," said the shop monster from outside the girl's cage.  After dealing with the purple-haired customer, the monster put a bit of tape on the edge reading in marker, in all caps, "I STOLE," and moved the cage to the counter, at the point of maximum visibility from the door.

As the day wore on, the girl had nothing to do but think about the day that would end with her in here.  Every bit of normalcy, the sofa she'd woken up on through breakfast, school, lunch, all the way through her decision to visit the mall, terrified her tiny self.  She felt so vulnerable in her present state's reminder of what had already happened that casting herself into those past selves oblivious to her present fate seemed to put some comparable, unknown fate into her shrunken self's future.

It had just been a bit of mischief.  A can of soda, a buck or two.  Maybe this was more - was it the soda that had shrunk her or some anti-shoplifting spell?  If the soda, it must have been more.  Until she'd drunk it, though, she had no idea what sort of shop this was, it just... called to her.  Somehow.  She'd never seen it before...

So she ruminated, watching the various mostly wizardly-monsterly types going in and out, until the gate came down.

"Can I go home now?" she asked from the cage.

"Certainly."  The shop monster picked the girl up and gently set her down on the floor.

"Uh... this isn't what I meant," said the girl.

"Oh, of course," said the shop monster, what looked like genuine surprise coming to her face.  She picked the girl up again, raising her to her face.  "I can take you - where do you live?"

The girl hadn't actually been intending to go home per se.  She hadn't been home in a while.

"A... actually, maybe you could keep me here?  Just until it wears off?"

"It won't wear off," said the shop monster casually.

The girl's eyes widened, and she began to flail in the monster's fingers.  "What?!  Why would anyone buy a shrink potion that wouldn't wear off?" she shouted, forgetting her prior uncertainty that it actually was a shrink potion.  After all, she wouldn't intentionally shrink shoplifters for life... would she...?

"You'd be surprised," said the shop monster, "but then again, you didn't buy it, did you?"  She set the girl on the counter, where she fell right onto her backside, and went to fetch a can of the same soda the girl had sneaked a few hours before.  Presenting it to the girl, the monster gestured toward a small bit of circuitry on the can.  "See this chip?  That controls the reversal effect.  When you buy the soda, it's set to the desired duration; it can only be set once per can.  And you did not buy the soda, so..."

The girl sighed.  "So I'll never be normal sized again?"

"Not unless you're transformed again."

"Do you have anything that can do that?  I'll pay.  For the soda, too, duh.  I'll pay extra for both."

"Not right now," said the shop monster.  The girl looked down at the desk.  The shop monster continued, "so do you want to go home?"

"No," said the girl.  "To be totally honest, there were a couple places I was thinking of spending the night, but none of them were home exactly."

The shop monster showed no emotion at that.  "I see.  Then, where do you wish me to take you?"

The girl closed her eyes and shook her head.  "I don't know."

"For tonight, I'll take you to my own home.  Will that be all right?"

"Sure."  The shop monster picked the girl up and put her into her purse.

"Welcome to my abode," the girl heard in time, as the shop monster set her on a table.  She looked around.  It looked... normal.  Sure, the decor was a bit dark, and the architecture didn't quite seem to work under Newtonian mechanics, but the functional elements - stove, artwork, sofa - seemed pretty standard for the apartment of a single small business manager.

On some level, she realized, she'd been expecting a cave, a dungeon, a palace, a genie bottle... but no, it was just an apartment.  The normality brought home to her again the truth of her situation, and she shuddered again.  "I'm going to be this way for the rest of my life..."

"Not necessarily," said the shop monster, having already opened a cupboard.  "Just for the foreseeable future."

"What am I going to do about school...?"

The shop monster turned.  "Forgive me for saying, but I didn't picture you as the type to much care about school."

"I don't... I guess... it's just, it's the next real obligation I have... the next reminder of the life that's just... gone."

The shop monster sighed and walked over, then gave the girl a pat on the head with one finger.  "Hey, don't worry.  We'll work something out.  This is Moperville; yours won't be the strangest case they've had."

"Really?" asked the girl.

"Really," said the monster.

Ten months later, the girl sat in a birdcage mounted beside the desk.  "I STOLE" was again printed on the side, now embossed on a brass placard.  She was crouched over miniaturized handouts, wracking her brain for each new answer, writing in a handheld notebook larger than her body.  She'd taken a flying leap forward in every subject since that day; there wasn't much hope for her for college right away, but the shop monster had promised her money for "thirteenth grade" at MCC.

"Okay," said the shop monster, "I've got a meeting with the lake gods; you're going to have to watch the store for a while."

"'Kay," said the girl.  As the shop monster departed, the girl opened the door of her cage and shimmied down a line stretched taut to a cleat on the desk.  She untied the rope from the cleat, the pulley system the cage was attached to keeping it from pulling her tiny body into the air.  Rather, hand over hand, she lowered the cage gently to the platform attached behind the counter for just this purpose.  She let go of the line and it was gently pulled to the top, where a knot kept it from being pulled further.  Her own weight would easily allow her to lift the cage again by it, and a hidden ladder would allow her access.

A blond girl walked in, a darker-haired white girl close at her side.  Slightly behind them walked an obvious couple, a boy with dark skin, dark hair, rippling muscles - he wore a sweatshirt on which was an image of a purple-haired girl lifting a couch over her head.  Wrapped around his arm was a girl of Chinese features looking around, eyes like dinner plates as she looked at all the magic items around the shop.

"How the heck did I miss this place before?" the girl on the boy's arm asked.

"I know, it's hard to notice if it's not pointed out to you," said the blond girl.  "I think it's only because I was a seer that I found it then."

"Tedd!" the tiny interim clerk shouted, waving to the blond girl.  "Welcome back!"

"Hi, Jen.  Anything new this week?"


End file.
